Today there are two lieutenants who oversee a total of about 85 detectives, who carry heavy caseloads consisting of burglary, theft, criminal mischief and other types of offenses, such as telephone harassment.

Deputy Chief Brigitte Gassaway, who oversees the property crimes division, did not respond to a request for comment asking how two lieutenants could be expected to do a job once done by seven. Her bosses, Assistant Chief Cindy Villarreal and First Assistant Chief Charles Cato, also have not responded to a request for comment.

So how did this situation come to be?

When Police Chief David Brown recently promoted 12 lieutenants to the rank of major, he reduced the number of lieutenants overseeing those units from seven to three.

Police Chief David Brown

– Lt. Richard Rivas, who already supervised the central patrol unit, was given the units at southeast and south central patrol.

– Lt. Regina Smith, who had the southwest patrol unit, took on the northwest patrol unit.

– Lt. Andrew Harvey was brought in to handle the units at north central and northeast.

As a result, department commanders assigned Rivas to take on the southwest patrol unit in addition to the three he already had. Harvey was given northwest patrol, giving him a total of three investigative units.

I reached out to Barry Payne and David Payne (no relation), retired lieutenants who oversaw patrol investigative units, to ask them to assess the situation.

Both agreed that a lieutenant could reasonably oversee two patrol investigative units, as long as he or she had very good sergeants keeping tabs on the unit’s day-to-day operations.

“If you don’t, then it’s almost impossible,” Barry Payne said.

Both also said a lieutenant could possibly oversee three units — but only if they had excellent sergeants in those units.

Here’s the rub: Southwest, South Central, Northwest and North Central have one sergeant apiece.

“Reductions in supervision reduces the quality of investigations,” Barry Payne said. “Detectives get so many cases that they will take short cuts unless you have somebody paying attention to make sure that they don’t.”

So what about having a lieutenant oversee four patrol investigative units as in the case of Rivas?

Both Paynes agreed that would be too much to reasonably expect of one person.